Earlier this week, I was adding up the number of ancestors and collateral relatives that I had as Illinois residents. To that I add those of my children. No wonder why I feel comfortable and knowledgeable about Illinois research! For full details and registration on this December 1st webinar, please visit Family Tree University.
I am a bit behind on this but Findmypast is offering free access to a wide variety of military records in honor of Veterans Day. From their press release:
Findmypast makes entire collection of more than 70 million world military records free for four days. Allll UK, Irish, Australian, Canadian and US military records free from the 10th to the 13th November 2016. Includes free access to over 43 million US and Canada military records.
From 04:00 EST, 10th November until 18:59 GMT, 13th November 2016, all 70 million records within Findmypast’s “Military, Armed Forces and Conflict” category will be completely free to search and explore, providing family (more…)
I love California and especially the greater Bay Area. I lived in Mountain View for a year when my ex-husband was stationed at Moffett Naval Air Station and my oldest son was born in Mountain View. I haven’t been back there for a few years, but this weekend, Saturday, October 22nd, I will be there.
Why? I am presenting an all-day seminar for the San Mateo County Genealogical Society. It’s a wonderfully organized organization. The four presentations are:
Join me and the society for an educational and fun day. My presentations apply to locations all across the U.S. I hear there are some neat silent auction items, too. Registration can be done at the door. For more info, check here.
Bonus payment applications, 4 page questionnaires, membership applications, family assistance details, descendant membership applications, old soldier home applications, and more yield great details on military personnel from the 19th and 20th centuries.
To learn more about these records found all across the U.S., join me tomorrow at the Minnesota Historical Society for a class that I am teaching from 10:00-12:30 on Saturday, October 8th. This is a Minnesota Genealogical Society class being held in the Gale Library at the state historical society in Saint Paul. The handout is 6 pages long! Register now to be sure you get the handout. You may also register “at the door” but the handouts may be gone.
http://www.mnhs.org/event/1970
If there are any issues on Kellogg Blvd. getting into the MHS parking lot due to preparations for the Twin Cities Marathon, just say you are going to attend a class at MHS.
The timeline of places where one of my great great grandfathers resided has always fascinated me. Today I was searching online using some of my more unusual ancestral surnames. I repeat this every few months in order to see what new items appear online. The result was that I added a street name for William Rudolph Slaker’s butcher shop in Berlin, Wisconsin.
One search was done on the freely available HathiTrust. Up popped the “Gazetteer and directory of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway and branches, the Western Union and the Sabula, Ackley & Dakota railroads : embracing all alphabetical directories, with sketches of all towns lying along the lines of the above railroads, distance tables and other information.” (Detroit, Mich.: Polk, Murphy & Co., 1875.) This is not a regular city directory, but it gave me what I needed.
He was a butcher before he retired and was also a butcher during his brief Civil War service that he entered from the town of Berlin. He later followed his two sons (Louis F. and Fred) to many locations around Wisconsin as they moved from one railroad station to another. Eventually they ended up in Saint Paul, Minnesota. My own hometown was not the last place of residence for all of them.
It’s ironical that I found William listed in a publication related to the Milwaukee Road. His two sons, and later a grandson, worked for the “Omaha” (Chicago, Saint Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha Railway).
Now I need to get back to Berlin and check out any of the old storefronts on Huron St.
Learning more about your family members who served in the U.S. military is helped by a wide variety of records. Some are created after the person is no longer serving and some involve survivors of those who died in the war effort.
In October, I am teaching a class on this topic: More than Pensions: 19th & 20th Century Military Records
Military personnel also received bonuses, tombstones, land, and other benefits. Applications, rejected files, correspondence, finding aids, indexes, organizational applications, and more at federal and state levels exist for them and for survivors. You will be surprised at what family details available in these records at state archives, historical societies, and other repositories from coast to coast.
Join me for this Minnesota Genealogical Society class on October 8th at the Minnesota Historical Society in Saint Paul. The class runs from 10:00-12:30 p.m and each registrant receives the extensive handout.
If you are on Facebook and other social media, you saw the great education and fun many genealogists had at the annual Federation of Genealogical Societies’ conference that was held last week in Springfield, Illinois. I attended the three evening events and three luncheons. It was a wonderful time and I heard many people saying they were planning ahead for the 2017 conference in Pittsburgh. If you weren’t there, have you thought about what you missed? You have almost a year to save up and to ask family and friends for gifts that will help you attend?
Book your room now for #FGS2017
FGS is pleased to announce that hotel reservations are now open for the 2017 Conference to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Two Pittsburgh hotels are now taking reservations for the FGS 2017 conference – “Building Bridges to the Past.” The conference will be held August 30-September 2 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
The Westin Convention Center and the Omni William Penn Hotel are offering reduced rates to FGS 2017 Conference attendees from Wednesday, August 23 to Friday, September 8 (subject to availability). Both hotels are conveniently located near the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
Westin Convention Center (Main Conference Hotel)
1000 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222
Omni William Penn Hotel
530 William Penn Place, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Full details and links for FGS discounted reservations can be found on the FGS website.
Conference hotels fill up quickly, so it is not too early to make reservations. We look forward to seeing you in Pittsburgh!
I apologize for not fulfilling my promise. It’s not my fault. I searched and searched on Thursday and Friday for the link I needed to give you. Nowhere. Nada. I didn’t receive the email from Ancestry that would have given the link. It was also not on the Ancestry related FB pages then. Neither was it on the Ancestry Blog.
Now that others that did receive the email announcement have shared it, here it is, but with few hours left to take advantage of it.
My The Lure of the Train Whistle: Researching Railroad Workers course I did for Ancestry Academy is free until Midnight today, September 5th. It’s not exactly the same as the presentation I do at seminars and conferences.
The course is found here.
FREE access ends 11:59pm ET Monday (registration for a free account is required). Use this link and once you do a basic name search, you can edit your search and add railroad as a keyword and look at the results list for a variety of railroad related databases and image sets on Ancestry.com
Also included are census records and substitutes and related, Native American rolls, employment records, directories, and so much more!
Now, if you have continued to read this post to this point, Laura Prescott who is the real brains behind Ancestry Academy, told me that my railroad course will be free for ALL of September. She and I are trying to dig up more details from the marketing folks!
Stay tuned!
Even though I am at the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference this week, I will have a special announcement to share on Thursday, September 1st. No, I won’t give any good hints, except to say it will involve something being FREE.
See you back here on Thursday!